The “Mona Lisa of Incompetence;" New News Is Good News; Slam Shut the Open Data Portal.

RVA 5x5 - August 12, 2024

No algorithms. No content filters. No A.I. — Honest and insightful analysis from Richmond, VA.

Check out our stories on:

• What takes longer to build? A 250-foot pedestrian bridge or a 10,000 capacity baseball stadium? Hint: you are in the City of Richmond.

• City “leaders” stopped updating a required check register listing all city payments five years ago because they say it is too much work to keep current.

• Just in time for all of the city elections in the fall comes a new, online local news source that will be a valuable addition to the knowledge of voters and residents in city issues and candidates that want to run the city.

STORY #1 — The “Mona Lisa of Incompetence”
Only in Richmond could you (sadly) be able to write a story that is a such a Mona Lisa masterpiece example of incompetence that represents just how broken City Hall has become under Mayor Stoney’s Administration. The fact that it is going to take more than four years to replace a 225-foot pedestrian bridge in the James River Park System is also the reason why the election this Fall of a new mayor and the appointment of a new Chief Administrative Officer are so important for Richmond.

In September 2022, Mayor Stoney made a big announcement about the Diamond District project whose centerpiece was a new baseball stadium that would be paid for by the revenues from all the surrounding development. In April 2023, the city announced the stadium project was a year behind and would not open as planned in April 2025. Then after more dithering, the Mayor announced in April 2024 huge changes to the original plan — the city would issue $170 million in bonds to build the stadium and infrastructure and take all the risk; but the stadium would be open by April 2026 come hell or high-water (or cost overruns) to comply with Major League Baseball’s veiled threat that if it wasn’t open by then, they would move the Squirrels’ franchise to another city.

Another announcement was also made in September 2022 that said the city was immediately closing the pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks and canal that offered access to Texas Beach in the James River Park System. The city did not say how long it would take to repair or replace the bridge, but a few months later funds were designated from the American Rescue Plan Act in November 2022 to pay for it and begin planning how to reopen access to the north bank of the James River. But then in May 2023, the city announced it would take at least until the summer of 2024 to reopen the bridge, even with the money in hand.

Now here we towards the end of summer 2024 and Sierra Krug at WRIC recently reported that the city announced they were continuing “to work diligently to repair the Texas Beach bridge” and hope to “have repairs completed by December 2026.”

Do not adjust your screen — that is not a misprint.

It will take more than twice as long (more than four years) to replace a 225-foot pedestrian bridge in the city’s crown jewel of its’ park system than it will to build the new baseball stadium that will hold 10,000 people.

We wrote about this scenario in May 2023 as a joke: There is an age-old debate about which came first — the chicken or the egg? In Richmond, there is a similar conundrum: which will come first — a new Texas Beach pedestrian bridge or a new baseball stadium?

But it turns out the joke is sadly on the lovers and users of James River Park. Sometimes you can’t make predictions up, but that one was infuriatingly accurate and yet another sign of the incompetence that has befallen City Hall. A frequent visitor of the park system Nicholas Thornton was understandably upset and when told it will take at least two more years, and told WRIC, “I was expecting the bridge to be open this summer. This is the easiest access point to get to this side, with the rocks. So that pretty… pretty much sucks.”

Dennis Bussey, the organizer of the James River Hikers who have made various improvement efforts to the Texas Beach area over the years told the Times-Dispatch